A Carlisle bakery is celebrating after reaching its fifth anniversary earlier this week. 

Martin Douglas fulfilled a life long dream when he opened MWD's Bakery, just a short while after he was made redundant from his previous job.

He started making trays of Mars bar cake at home and selling it through Facebook, which attracted the interest of several local businesses including Crumbs, Blackwell Bites, Rolltoppers and Gencos. 

Martin said: "I decided it's now or never I have always wanted to have my own business and my end goal was to have a café or cake shop."

Just as his business was starting to grow, the pandemic hit, and Marty was forced to adjust his methods. 

He said: "I tried to not let it affect my business so I changed how I worked and started a home delivery service and made sure I would get through it and I did. The only positive I took from those strange time was Covid helped my business grow."

In March 2023, Martin was asked to launch a pop-up cafe and 16 months later, it is still going strong, with the support of staff members Ruby, Sarah, Viv, Ian and two Amy's.

Martin added: "The café is still open and doing really well, however it's not been easy trying to juggle the café, supplying to shops, baking everything myself and attending to other issues.

"It's been the hardest year of business and I was always told the first three years are the hardest when opening a business. Nobody said year five would be this tough.

"Usually I wouldn't make a big deal of these things and I shy away from it all but today I'm really proud of where my business is."

Martin is extremely grateful to everyone who has supported him in making MWD's Bakery a success, whether that be local businesses or regular customers. 

He said: "Some of my biggest supporters are people I hardly know and have made my dream possible.

The business isn't just quite where I want it to be so over the next six months there will be lots of exciting changes made and 2025 is going to be the year."